Remember the Dead
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: A survivor looks on at the devastated world and what he has lost like every other survivor.


I don't own Independence Day, I just own this story since it gives me a chance to really play in the Independence Day universe.

Enjoy.

* * *

Remember the Dead.

Chris looked out over the devastated remains of the city of London. It had been a year since the alien had appeared in clouds of flames, drifting over land and sea towards the cities of the world, before the massive saucer-shaped alien ships had appeared and travelled over the cities and cast their shadow across the cities.

For hours the motionless, giant vessels had just hovered over the cities before they had opened up. Millions of people had stood underneath the ships, holding signs telling them they were welcome, to bring back the dead from famous actors and other celebrities, a few people even wanted the aliens to bring back their pet dogs, for God's sake!

When the ships finally opened up, casting an eerie green-blue light over the cities they were hovering over, all those people had gotten was dead as deadly beams of energy, destroying everything underneath them and spreading outwards, incinerating houses, skyscrapers, museums, libraries and galleries that held a wealth of human knowledge, literature, and art and history… most of it was now hopelessly lost because of the invader's wanton disregard for life as they looked for a world to consume before they moved on.

The story of what the invaders had wanted had spread from America. One of the aliens had communicated with President Whitmore, telepathically burning searing images of previous battles that had been going on across hundreds of years into the past, of worlds and races who had been overrun and destroyed by the invaders as they threw themselves upon the planet, tearing the resources of the planet to pieces before they left a dead husk of a once-living world behind.

And Earth would have been the latest victim. While the Americans had one of their fighter-ships locked away in Area 51 (Chris imagined the conspiracy lunatics had been overjoyed by the news the fabled base which had taken in the Roswell saucer really did exist, and everything said about it was more or less true, but he didn't care; he was bitter and angry that the Americans, for reasons defying understanding, had actually hidden the knowledge of the aliens from the rest of the world, believing the creatures to be harmless, though why they hadn't used their brains he didn't know), and Whitmore's mind was full of secondhand memories of what that alien had transferred into his brain, no-one was entirely sure just how many races the aliens had destroyed.

Chris had tried more than once, and standing on what remained of London Bridge as he looked over the devastated and burnt-out ruins of the city he had lived in, worked in and had been educated in, he found it hard to work out. He had no doubt in his mind at some point news would come out, unless of course, the Americans decided, in their infinite wisdom, to bury the whole story of what had happened to some of those other races even if Whitmore's knowledge about them was too obscure to put into firm and solid fact.

Okay, Chris knew he couldn't entirely blame the Americans for this. He didn't doubt for a second that the alien invaders had in fact travelled to and from their ship to Earth for decades. Like everybody else, Chris had no idea how far the ship had been during the Roswell incident, but he could guess the Mother Ship had been just outside the solar system, though how they had managed to get here was beyond his comprehension. Had the aliens no idea or concept about time like humans? Or had they invented a powerful sub-light engine that allowed them to travel to Earth really fast without being burdened with the limitations like human spacecraft? Chris wouldn't put it past them, just like he would not be surprised if they had found a way of travelling faster than light, like Captain Kirk, or Han Solo.

But the aliens… they had been visiting Earth for years, perhaps even centuries.

Perhaps they had visited every country on the planet, including his own, using their technology to spy on humans using instruments and sensors which were beyond current human comprehension. There was logic to that. When you moved into a new home, you wanted to visit the place and see the layout of the house or the apartment. Maybe the same was true of alien invasions, but in the ordinary human wars hadn't there been spies on both sides who had gathered intelligence about the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing sides, and didn't that have the effect of deciding on who won the war?

Chris knew he couldn't entirely blame the Americans for believing that the alien invaders were not hostile, even though the stories coming out from there about the matter were currently vague as if they didn't have all the information; what had been said was that the survivor of the crash in Roswell had communicated telepathically with the scientists in Area 51, sharing that they were not hostile. But from what was coming out now the invasion had been narrowly defeated, not all of the scientists had been taken in.

A few had been sceptical about the whole experience, they had claimed that they'd gotten an odd vibe, and they hadn't believed the alien, though what had happened to them Chris had no idea, though it was very clear they hadn't been believed about their warnings.

_I belt they wish they'd listened now, _Chris thought to himself darkly as he gazed around the ruins of the city, his mind still on the invaders and their story of conquest.

The story was not an old one. Chris did like sci-fi, but he wasn't a major buff at it like some, but he knew that there were a few novels and movies, and even TV series of alien aggressors who had attacked Earth and tried to wipe out the population. HG Wells had written The War of the Worlds, which described an invasion by warlike Martians who had invaded Earth simply because they wanted to survive. They would have torn the environment to pieces, uncaring as they tore out the centuries of work humanity had put in to make this planet their own. They would have destroyed every animal, insect, and plant they found, and they would have consumed them on a scale humanity simply could not match.

Chris looked away, trying to forget the difficult days that had arisen in the aftermath of the invasion. Everyone had been amazed and surprised when the Americans had suddenly organised a counter-attack against the aliens since everything had failed, including nuclear weapons. But they had transmitted a virus into their ships' main computers and it brought down the shields on the smaller city-ships. The alien ships had been destroyed, but now the euphoria had worn off the entire world had a great deal of work to do.

The invasion had resulted in a devastated planet. Earth was so badly polluted now because of the invasion, every city on the planet had been devastated. Millions had been killed in one go when the alien ships had fired their main weapons downwards onto the cities and spread out to encompass every square inch. Worse, the radioactivity in the atmosphere was even higher now than it had been a year before the aliens had arrived. America had not been the only country on Earth to use nuclear weapons; nearly every other country had as well. They had been desperate; their countries had just been attacked, and hundreds had been killed in a short time, and more died as time passed.

Using the nuclear bombs on the aliens had been a logical outcome. But it had been a waste of time, at least on Earth. The aliens must have known that humanity would use the nuclear bomb as a weapon. If that not once more highlight how much the aliens had known about the human race, Chris couldn't say.

It hadn't worked. The aliens had the shields to do it, and the result was a number of devastated cities which had been blasted with the full force of a nuclear bomb and were now irradiated. It could take decades for those patches of land to be rebuilt and centuries before the radiation had faded completely.

Chris sighed and took from his pocket the only photograph he had left of his parents and his sisters and younger brother. He was the eldest of the family, and he had moved out of his home before his eighteenth birthday and had gotten a job.

He had run away from the city which hadn't been an easy task, one of the millions to have managed to escape from London before the invasion had begun, abandoning the rest of his stuff while he had made his way for the coast. The aliens had panicked and terrified millions of people when they had first arrived, and that was the only reason why so many had survived. His dad had contacted him mere hours before the invasion had begun, telling Chris they would meet in the South. Chris had barely managed to get away before the aliens had fired on London, but when he had gotten down to the South, there was no sign of the rest of his family.

Chris had waited there for days and days, travelling endlessly and barely having any time for food except to take in enough to keep him going. Eventually, he had faced facts.

His parents were dead.

His siblings were dead.

He was on his own, and as he looked out on the devastated London, his new wife Stacy by his side who had been his girlfriend since before the invasion and they had hooked up again in the aftermath of the horror, Chris swore as he glanced down at Stacy's light bump in her tummy that their child would have a better world. There was life out there, but Chris swore to protect his unborn child against the horrors of the universe. He swore it as he remembered the dead, and he swore to make sure the memories of his family were never lost. He might have only a single photograph of them and no photo album, but Chris swore that his children would never be without him or his wife.


End file.
